CALLING DR. DEATH. Universal Pictures, 1943. Lon Chaney [Jr.], Patricia Morison, J. Carrol Naish, David Bruce, Ramsay Ames, Fay Helm. Director: Reginald Le Borg.

   This is the first in a series of six films based on the very popular 1940s radio program, Inner Sanctum Mystery, all of them starring Lon Chaney, Jr. Unfortunately it’s a perfectly ordinary murder mystery, with none of macabre overtones that I remember of the radio series.

   I’m also not sure that Lon Chaney was the right person to cast as the star of all six — not based on his role in this one. Can you see Lon Chaney as a noted neurologist who uses hypnotism as one of ways he helps his patients? I tried and I just couldn’t do it, no matter how nicely he talked, softly and eloquently and dressed up in a suit.

   As far as the story is concerned, it turns out that even noted neurologists can have marital problems, and when his errant wife turns up dead, he’s an obvious suspect. His alibi? He has none. What’s worse, he has a total blackout for the time of her death. Although another man, his wife’s lover, is accused of the crime, he is hounded by a dogged police inspector (J. Carrol Naish), who does not believe the official version of the case.

   What can Dr. Steele do but find the real murderer himself, aided by his lovely assistant (Patricia Morison)? Don’t forget that Dr. Steele is a master hypnotist. Can he hypnotize himself? Well, of course he can.

   The problem is not the relatively hokey plot. It’s the fact the real killer is obvious from reel one onward. No surprise ending for this one, alas. I’ve always been a big fan of the radio series, since I was eight years old, but this first film I found disappointing.

SKYJACKED. MGM, 1972. Charlton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, James Brolin, Claude Akins, Jeanne Crain, Susan Dey, Roosevelt Grier, Mariette Hartley, Walter Pidgeon, Ken Swofford, Leslie Uggams. Based on the novel Hijacked by David Harper. Director: John Guillermin.

   Sometimes films with all-star casts, no matter how stellar, end up falling a bit flat. That’s the case with Skyjacked, a Hollywood disaster film about a deranged American soldier (James Brolin) suffering from post-traumatic stress who hijacks an American airliner.

   That’s not to say that there aren’t some genuinely tense moments in the movie, or that Charlton Heston doesn’t give a solid, eminently believable performance as the airplane’s captain. It’s just that, despite the presence of veteran actors and actresses such as Brolin, Yvette Mimieux, Walter Pidgeon, and Claude Akins, the whole production ends up feeling rather languid, as if all the characters were going through the motions, behaving in the most stereotypical manner possible. (See, for instance, the pregnant woman who goes into labor mid-hijacking, and the laid back African-American jazz musician who ends up seated next to the overwrought hijacker).

   From what I can tell, however, Skyjacked was the first major Hollywood production where an airline hijacking was central to the plot. In that sense, the movie was the template for things to come. Unfortunately, it’s now all but impossible to watch this John Guillermin-directed work without one’s mind drifting and thinking about Airplane (1980), the Paramount comedy that successfully mocked and played homage to the numerous airline disaster movies such as this one that Hollywood churned out during the 1970s.

HOLLY ROTH – Too Many Doctors. Random House, hardcover, 1962. Avon, paperback, no date stated.

   As the few of you who read my reviews know, I am infamous for my dubious entries in categories. But since Dr. Owings says, albeit late in the novel, that traveling by ship is a vacation before his new assignment in Hong Kong, I am placing this novel in the holiday category.

   Shortly after the M. S. Tilburg sailed from England for its various ports of call, Elizabeth Smith falls — or was she pushed? — down a flight of deck stairs, suffering various injuries, including a concussion and amnesia. Neurosurgeon Max Owings, who may be fleeing England because of an accusation that he refused to treat a little girl, is asked to consult in the case.

   Meanwhile, back in England, a psychiatrist has been murdered, the ship’s former doctor who died en route to England has been found to be full of poison, and another dead man with a stethoscope in his pocket has been fished out of the Thames. The Tilburg’s present doctor is too good looking by half and not quite competent.

   Reluctantly is how I started this novel. Amnesia is one of my least favorite subjects in mysteries. Roth, however, is a delightful stylist who also depicts interesting and amusing characters. I wasn’t well pleased with the conclusion, but it didn’t spoil my reading experience.

Bibliographic Note:   Bill didn’t mention this in his review, but the detective who is assigned this case is Inspector Medford, presumably of Scotland Yard. The reason he should be noted is that he appeared in one earlier novel, that being Shadow of a Lady (Simon & Schuster, 1957).

From the 1986 CD A Tribute to Steve Goodman:

Wikipedia says: “Bonnie Koloc (born February 6, 1946) is an American folk music singer-songwriter, actress, and artist who was considered one of the three main Illinois-based folk singers in the 1970s, along with Steve Goodman and John Prine forming the ‘trinity of the Chicago folk scene.'”

THE WHITE GORILLA. Fraser & Merrick, 1945. Ray Corrigan, Lorrain Miller, Charles King and Francis Ford. Written, produced & directed by Harry L. Fraser.

   Dammit, I felt like watching a Killer Ape movie, and this time it was The White Gorilla, made in 1945 and 1927. No, that’s not two versions, it’s actually one movie made nearly twenty years apart.

   To better understand The White Gorilla you need to know something about its auteur, Harry L. Fraser, who also worked under the names Arthur Borris, Wayne Carter, Harry P. Christ, Harry S. Christ, Harry C. Crist, Harry P. Crist, Harry Crist, Miller Easton, Weston Edwards, Harry Frazer, Clint Johnson, Harry O. Jones, Harry Jones, Timothy Munro, Monroe Talbot, Munro Talbot, Victor von Resarf and Edward Weston. Those who profess to enjoy the films of Ed Wood need to take a look at Fraser’s oeuvre and recognize him as the spiritual father of bad movies. Fraser worked in film from the silent days to the 50s with only the faintest glimmer of talent, and most times not even that, but he brought his films in on time and under budget, which kept him gainfully employed at studios where they wanted it done Tuesday.

   According to Fraser’s memoirs (I Went That-a-Way, Scarecrow, 1990) it took three and a half days in 1945 to film White Gorilla, and looking at it today, one can only wonder how he spent three of them. Most of the footage shot in ’45 consists of Ray “Crash” Corrigan sitting around a cardboard mock-up of a Jungle Trading Post telling Charles King and Francis Ford what happened to “the Rogers safari.” Every so often we flash-back to scenes of Crash walking through the woods behind somebody’s back yard, which is supposed to be the African jungle, looking off-screen and seeing… well, whatever grainy old footage of wildlife happened to be handy at the time, including tigers and new world monkeys.

   But it gets better. As Crash continues his story, the movie flash-backs to old footage from Perils of the Jungle, shot in 1927. And this footage is so blatantly mis-matched as to provoke disbelieving laughter from anyone who sees it: the actors are all made-up in classic silent-movie style, with rouged lips and eye shadow, they mime their parts with pre-talkie emphasis, and they seem to move at the wrong speed. So we get these 1945 shots of Ray “Crash” Corrigan standing in somebody’s shrubs, saying voice-over, “…as I watched, the lions surrounded Rogers’ camp…” and then we cut-away to the hilarious footage of what he’s supposedly watching. And of course, since all this was filmed eighteen years earlier, Corrigan can’t interact with anyone in the Rogers safari, so he – or the writer — has to keep coming up with excuses like, “…with no ammunition, I could only watch helplessly while the natives…” or “…with the river between us, I could only watch helplessly while the crocodile…”

   Well, he’s not the only one watching helplessly, but White Gorilla gets better still. Sometimes we cut away from Crash to more recent footage, filmed that same weekend, of someone in a white Gorilla outfit lumbering through the woods. Eventually the guy in the white Gorilla suit runs into someone in a black Gorilla suit and the two mimic fighting for a few minutes. Then the camera simply seems to lose interest and we cut back to Corrigan or to the silent movie for a few chapters till the refrain starts in again: someone in a white Gorilla outfit lumbering through the woods, running into someone in a black Gorilla suit, whereupon the two mimic fighting for a few minutes, till the camera loses interest and…. It’s like being caught in a time warp. I have it on good authority that Crash played at least one of the battling apes, so this film was quite a stretch for him dramatically.

   White Gorilla, in short, is one of those films so jaw-droppingly awful as to be truly fun to watch, and I recommend it to anyone who can approach it in the proper spirit. While we were watching it, I happened to mention to my wife that the writer-director had written a memoir, and she responded, “Because those who forget the past have to repeat it?”

BRETT HALLIDAY – Murder Is My Business. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1945. Dell #184, paperback, mapback edition, no date stated [1947]. Reprinted many times thereafter, including Hard Case Crime, paperback, 2010.

   A post-war adventure for PI Michael Shayne, or if not, it takes very close to the end of the hostilities. It’s a complicated affair, involving possible enemy spying and/or the luring of American soldiers based in the area of El Paso, Texas, across the border into Mexico in order to pump them for secrets they may have picked up in passing. There’s also a silver mine involved, and competing claims of whether a vein has run out of not.

   It also involves a gent that Shayne had run into before, not in a friendly fashion, who is now running for mayor, and a broken love affair involving that same gentleman’s daughter. The plot’s a mixed bag of false trails and two dead bodies, one stripped naked for reasons no man (nor Mike Shayne) can figure out why, plus a gun, a murder weapon, shot three times, although the aforementioned daughter claims she only fired it twice.

   Everything ties together at the end, I believe, but as a plot for an otherwise smoothly written murder mystery, it’s all a bit too much. But take another glance at the words “smoothly written.” As a wordsmith, Brett Halliday in the 1940s was one of the best. Even though Shayne was far off his New Orleans stomping grounds at the time, this one goes down nice and easy.

ROBERT WEINBERG “Three Steps Back.” First appearance: Dial Your Dreams & Other Nightmares, DarkTales Publications, softcover, August 2001.

   If you were to ask me for an example of a solidly constructed horror story that doesn’t touch upon the mystical, the supernatural, or the weird, Robert Weinberg’s “Three Steps Back” would immediately come to mind. Originally published in Dial Your Dreams, a collection of Weinberg’s short stories, the tale can be found within a sub-section of the collection simply entitled, “Nightmares,” in which Weinberg contends that he “always felt the most frightening horror stories are those that don’t feature any element of the supernatural … The real horrors of the world surround us.”

   Set on a university campus, the plot of “Three Steps Back” revolves around the desire of a graduate student by the name of Jake Edwards to unravel the mystery of the Gray Ghost of Illinois University. But the ghost in question here isn’t a supernatural entity. No, he’s just an older man with an extremely bizarre habit: he doesn’t seem to want anyone to be behind him. It’s as if he fears some sort of presence behind him.

   Soon Jake comes to realize that the Gray Ghost is all-too-human. He’s a veteran named Chet Williams who has a severe case of what we now call PTSD. Williams’s fear of people lurking behind him, as it turns out, stems from a particularly heinous experience in a Viet Cong POW camp.

   But that can’t the extent of the story, now can it? Weinberg skillfully builds the suspense, raising it up a notch until the ultimate revelation. As he so rightly notes in his introduction, horror doesn’t need to be supernatural to be mightily effective.

David Rea passed away on October 27th, 2011, a day after his 65th birthday. David played lead guitar with Gordon Lightfoot, Ian & Sylvia and Joni Mitchell, among many others before becoming a singer-songwriter and storyteller in his own right.

TRANCERS. Empire Pictures, 1984. Tim Thomerson (Jack Deth), Helen Hunt, Michael Stefani, Art La Fleur, Telma Hopkins, Richard Herd, Anne Seymour. Written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo. Director: Charles Band.

   Opening lines:

   A corny bit of voice-over narration, perhaps, but it does two things exceedingly well. Not only does it set the scene of the story to follow, and but it also sets the tone, that of an overtly tongue-in-cheek sci-fi time travel tale in which Whistler intends to wipe out the City Council in 23rd century Angel City by traveling to the past (1985) and killing off their ancestors. (No, Whistler is not dead.)

   Jack Deth’s job: stop him. And thanks to the help of a punk rock girl named Leena (a very young Helen Hunt) who helps him find his way around Los Angeles, long ago destroyed by The Big One in his world, he does exactly that.

   After watching a short bit of a black and white PI rerun on TV:

   If Trancers was made on a low budget, it doesn’t really show. There are no expensive special effects to drive up costs, most of the players did not require large salaries, and everyday locations were all that were needed. That and a huge sense of wonderfully goofy fun, taking lots of elements from other bigger budget movies and mixing them all together into a film that no one should walk away from with a frown on their face.

PostScript: A cast and crew reunion was held last month in a store in Burbank. I’d have loved to have been there:

LENORE GLEN OFFORD – Clues to Burn. Duell Sloane & Pearce, hardcover, 1942. Mercury Mystery #186, digest paperback, abridged, 1953.

   After the Electrical Dealers’ Convention, at which Bill Hastings discussed Priorities and Coco was an Electrical Widow, the two of them were looking forward to a quiet time on Sally Dudley’s rustic island — coal-oil lamps and outdoor plumbing — in a remote part of Idaho. Little did they know that others would show up to strain the food supply and the festivities and commit murder.

   Having investigated an earlier murder, Coco is eager, for the most part, to find out who killed the woman no one seemed to know. But, as the book’s title states, there are clues to burn — a bloody fingerprint, footprints, cigarette papers, etc. Is the murderer playing games with Coco, or is the shrewd killer planting, if such a thing can be done, red herrings?

   A fine husband-and-wife team in an amusing and richly clued — but which are real? — mystery.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   There was one earlier adventure of Bill and Coco Hastings, that being Murder on Russian Hill (Macrae-Smith, 1938). Besides writing six other mysteries, four of them with mystery writer turned amateur detective Todd McKinnon, Lenore Glen Offord was the mystery book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle for over 30 years.